Nevertheless the Southerners, seeing the strategic situation far more clearly than Halleck did, abandoned Nashville and Federal troops of Buell's army promptly occupied that city. Thus Grant's success was saved to the country in some small and insignificant measure, though Grant was himself suspended from command and compelled to wait in inglorious ease until the Confederates by ceaseless and heroic efforts got together a great army in northern Mississippi, to meet which General Halleck found it necessary to call upon his most capable lieutenant, Ulysses S. Grant. CHAPTER XXII BETWEEN MANASSAS AND SHILOH--THE SITUATION IN VIRGINIA It is necessary now to record what had meanwhile been going on in Virginia and elsewhere. At the beginning of November General George B. McClellan was placed in supreme command subject only to the President--of all the armies of the United States. He was called "the young Napoleon," though upon what grounds of achievement that characterization was based it is difficult to conjecture. He was thirty-five years of age, and therefore young. He was a West Point graduate and an accomplished officer of engineers. He had been sent during the Crimean war to observe and report upon the organization and conduct of European armies. He had made a report admirable in its literary quality and expert in its observations. Later he had won distinction by his very capable conduct of that campaign in western Virginia which resulted in the division of the "pivotal" border state, and the arraying of its western half upon the Federal side. But neither in his deeds nor in the temper of his mind was there aught that could with propriety be called Napoleonic. He was given from first to last, as will appear hereafter, to the temperamental fault of exaggerating his enemy's strength and to a shrinking from conflict with a foe whose forces he thus overestimated. Nevertheless, when McClellan was appointed to the supreme command of the Union armies after his months of organizing at Washington it was expected of him that he should at once advance upon Richmond and dictate terms of surrender in the Confederate capital itself.